Who is SurgePath?

SurgePath is a business and product growth consultancy that provides custom guidance to small and mid-sized (primarily software) companies to fuel growth, scalability and next-level business success. Unlike most business growth consultancies, SurgePath has deep experience leading both strategic and tactical software product initiatives across an array of industry leading companies. This experience gives us the unique ability to provide both strategic software product guidance and the ability to drive the execution of recommended initiatives. Our product leadership experience spans industries such as retail, real estate, technology, sports and travel. We specializes in all areas of product growth, including; product strategy, product management, innovation, scalable execution, success measurement frameworks and market delivery.

Our Partnership Style

We’re not simply an external 3rd party consultancy. We think of ourselves as a true partner that will collaborate tightly with your team to problem solve. Frankly, we’d like to work onsite with the team as much as possible, get to know everyone and the problems at the ground level so that we can forge relationships and tackle challenges together. We don’t have a pre-canned template of solutions for our services. Instead, we’ll assess your unique situation and use our broad expertise to provide the guidance that you need. We have expansive product domain experience that includes; business intelligence, consumer websites, core technology innovation, productivity tools and social marketing, among others. Although we have experience working with companies of all shapes and sizes, our wheelhouse is the small software company…anywhere from 1 to around 200 employees…that needs senior level guidance in the product strategy / execution / management area and is serious about improving.

About The Founder

Don Sedota brings 20 years of experience leading world class software product organizations and solutions within a wide array of industries. Most recently, Don served as the VP of Product at Windsor Circle where he established the company’s first Product organization and helped to drive a 1081% 3-Yr revenue growth combined with the company’s first ever appearance on the INC 5000 list in 2016 (#351). Prior to Windsor Circle, Don led the Product team at BoomTown in Charleston, SC where he started and grew the Product Management organization from the ground up over a period when BoomTown was named an Inc. 500 | 5000 “Fastest Growing Company” several years in a row and the company secured $20M in growth funding in 2014. Don has also served in various product leadership roles at several software companies in Austin, TX, including Bazaarvoice. There, he pioneered the award winning Bazaarvoice Intelligence product line, partnered with Fortune 500 companies such as Best Buy, Lowe’s, Kohl’s and Cabela’s, and helped lead the company from private to public in 2012. Don spent several years at IBM Software Group early in his career where he drove cutting edge software innovation as part of IBM’s elite Emerging Technologies team. In between, Don has led business, marketing and technology consulting projects for a variety of brands, including the NFL’s Denver Broncos, MLB’s San Diego Padres, Travelocity and Dell. Don’s B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Central Florida and MBA from the University of Texas at Austin underlies his technology and business savviness. Don’s product innovation credentials are underscored by his 4 patents in the area of online consumer behavior based business intelligence.

Over the years, Don has developed a passion for helping small and mid-sized companies grow and thrive through sound product strategy, execution and decision making disciplines that result in industry leading products. He would love to share his broad experience and partner with your company to help get your business to the next level.

Simply put, Don was a game changer for us. At the time we were able to bring Don in, we were an inexperienced (naive), bootstrapped startup that had hit a wall when it came to scaling our early product successes. As a product-driven co-founder, I worked side-by-side with Don over the next 2+ years as he built out a highly scalable and pragmatic Product Management group. He was instrumental in driving the greater product strategy, as well as guiding teams and individuals in the day to day execution and delivery. Don’s critical thinking, relentless work ethic, and obsessive commitment to delivering amazing products were critical to our company’s growth and set a solid foundation that will support us for years to come. On a personal level, I am grateful for everything that he taught me over the years. It was an honor and a pleasure working –and laughing– with Don during such an intense and challenging period of growth. Don is a great person, with a rare passion and gift for helping teams deliver amazing products – we were lucky to have him on our side! -Cooper Bane, Chief Innovation Officer and Co-Founder at BoomTown

Product Leadership means so many things today, that it can be hard to know what experience and skill-set will be a good fit for your organization. Don has the rare ability to lead at the level of strategic prioritization, and also drive effective processes to ensure each iteration is better than the last. In one instance he helped us cut 2/3’s of our scope and still deliver the core value to our users–it’s hard to think of a better investment than his ruthless prioritization that helped us ship a great product 3x faster. The only thing that might come close is how he consistently engages with users to make sure roadmap fits real felt needs. I can’t recommend Don highly enough for any organization looking to increase product discipline, focus and market fit.-Mike Schneider, CEO of First

Don is a brilliant technologist and Head of Product. He brought much-needed discipline, innovation and process to Windsor Circle at a time when product-market fit was of paramount importance. Don led multiple successful efforts to re-define our market focus, value proposition and product roadmap during times of rapid change, fast growth and a changing market. Don is customer-centric, solves problems with elegant, efficient solutions and is masterful at juggling competing demands prioritizing effectively. He provides strong product leadership and management, all the while remaining friendly, approachable and grounded.-Andrew Pearson, CMO of Samanage (Former VP of Marketing at Windsor Circle)

Don came to BoomTown at a crucial time in our history where we had experienced good initial success as a company but really needed some senior level product guidance to help us focus, organize, strategize and infuse mature product disciplines into the organization. Don provided this guidance and helped BoomTown break through to the next level as a company and set BoomTown up with a solid, long term Product Management framework that enables continued, scalable product growth. Don effectively pioneered major facets of our current PM disciplines…starting with building / growing a formal PM team and driving scalable frameworks for market discovery, strategic decision making, roadmapping, iterative Agile development, team organization, product launch and product success measurement. As a member of BoomTown’s leadership team, Don also brought a level of critical thinking and professional experience that was invaluable to higher level business and organizational strategy topics.-Grier Allen, CEO and Co-Founder at BoomTown

Don is one of those rare product visionaries and strategists that every company needs. When Windsor Circle hired Don to lead our product team and develop our product vision and roadmap, we had no idea how far he would outperform our expectations. His understanding and leadership in our product development have been instrumental in developing our industry leading predictive marketing platform. He is simply the best product leader I’ve had the privilege to work with in my 20+ years in technology and I strongly recommend him to any company who is looking to get their Product or Product team to the next level.-Chris Humphres, CTO at Windsor Circle

Don is one-of-a-kind: he’s an experienced product leader who understands the whole product organization, can play every role, and can build and drive a team around it. His diligence and process-orientation really helped us to make sense of a complex tasks like shepherding our product roadmap and continually iterating with feedback from our key customers. But my favorite thing about Don is that he asks the hard questions that you _really_ need to answer, whether you want to or not!-Jess Martin, CTO at First

Don came to Windsor Circle in just as we were closing our Series B. My CTO and I had done an ok job of getting the product from whiteboard to production, and as a company we’d signed quite a few customers. But we were starting to really see product debt piling up as we held hands across the chasm to guide the product (me being a business-side CEO, combined with a deeply technical CTO). Don’s clear command of product management helped us immensely as he kept asking “who’s the perfect customer,” “what’s the perfect outcome for the customer,” and “let’s move from minimum viable product to minimum loveable product” when testing new releases. We had several moments in our journey when a serious, detailed, root-cause analysis effort was needed to fix a particular implementation or market segmentation decision that was made before Don’s time, and which required retooling. He is an excellent judge of talent, and a disciplined, well liked manager in our organization. He has made huge contributions, for which I am very grateful, and I am very proud to have worked side by side with him. He should be very proud of the platform that has evolved under his leadership… I certainly am.-Matt Williamson, Co-Founder and CEO of Windsor Circle